I would be interested in such a poll once Dante is released. I'm sure Takara would win fairly handily over MT and MMC right now. With Dante in the mix, I have little doubt that 50% of the results would be split among the 3P offerings. Very much like Shockwave.

That's a fair assessment and everyone's lists of positives and negatives will be different. A lot of your toon-accurate pros I would list as excessively toon-accurate and are cons on my list. Also, several things that you list as pros also apply to the 3P options, so that's really a wash. The face sculpt and hiding ladder are the only things that I find better than the two other current 3P options. Most everything else I could have gone either way (and still may depending on how Dante turns out later on down the road). To me this is the best figure from a group of lackluster options. Honestly if I hadn't gotten the deal that I did from Amazon, I'd have held off buying him.

As for selling out, he's still available at amiami and Amazon (sadly that doesn't do foreign buyers any good). I do admit that he's selling pretty well, but it is also conceivable that retailers ordered less of them after the slower sales of the prior 5 MPs, particularly Lazerwave who saw 50% discounts on Amazon before finally selling out.

You wouldn't know truth if it walked up and kicked you in the ass. Just keep making shit up if it makes you happy.  

 

By 'truth', if you mean the 'truth' that your nonsensical polls convey, yeah, you're right, I wouldn't know!

 

 

My Inferno came in stock at AE. It should be come to about $99 shipped.

 

California. It was two week shipping with tracking and insurance for approx $16. I tried a couple of different ways of checking out and I used the Yen and had PayPal do the conversion, which cost me about $9 less than checking out with US dollar. My total was $102.65.

 

After watching its transformation in this review two times, gosh, I got to say its transformation is simply ingenious and detailed. The flow and logic behind is so good that making it no hassle to transform it at all.. Apart from MP-27 Ironhide, this is definitely one of the best in term of engineering and transformation. What also amazes me is the flexibility skill of making these various sizes of vehicles into same height of robot -- Ironhide and Inferno shares same height despite their different sizes in vehicle mode. I personally think that it fits pretty well with the rest of masterpieces aesthetically despite their panel details and designer's ideologies. The professional skills of each designers are top notch, but I think Kobayashi is a genius!

 

Haha, totally fair enough, although I tried to list things that weren't "excessively toon-accurate". For example, even if this was the blended Hasui style design, I still feel this Inferno would have the same proportions, same awesome transformation, same accessories perhaps minus the toon styled ones). He would would just feature some extra sculpted details, tail lights, and rear bumper.

Hmm, don't agree here. Well, I'll give you highly articulated. But I tried to list options that Inferno had that the others didn't. No other one features a fully painted vehicle, or toon optional parts, or even a decent accessory count besides a weapon and a few face/heads. Ok, MT does have the visible arms in vehicle mode, but isn't as nicely articulated. (And lets be honest, this is really a contest between Backdraft and Inferno at this point....is Hellfire even a contender anymore  )

Hopefully you'll find Inferno much more pleasing in hand than in pictures. At least we can agree the engineering is brilliant, and the faces are great. (Maybe you can swap Inferno's head on Backdraft's body)

 

And likely the black shoulder accents, chrome bracers\wrists\shoulder tops (or at least silver), and optional side mirrors. I know there are some here who are super happy with the optional toon parts, but those likely would have been left out in the Hasui era thus making the figure cheaper and I would wager the vast majority of collectors would be perfectly fine with that.

huh, I could have sworn Backdraft was fully painted too. I know the TCP review mentions red paint, so I know he's at least partially painted. I'll give you the toon parts, those are most definitely unique to this guy. I'm just not sure how much of a plus they are to most people. They're just an added expense and closet decorator for me personally. I do agree that in all honesty, MT's offering isn't really a contender (my apologies to MT fans). Backdraft has a lot of good features, but as much as I'm ragging on Inferno here, Backdraft has a fair number of issues himself. And that's kind of my overall point; none of the current Infernos are great. So yes, this one right now is a notch better.

Yeah. The engineering and faces are spot on, no question there. I'm not as enthralled by the engineering as I mostly display and rarely transform, but it's nice to know that it's well designed. Aesthetically, in the most simplistic terms, if I could swap MMC's lower half onto Takara's upper half, I'd be pretty happy with that.  

 

I really like the direction they're going with the extra add-ons to give toon and err...not-toon look.

 

Japanese Amazon just delivered my two MP Infernos! Was $185 USD total (gotta love the current ¥ exchange rate) with free delivery.

 

Yep, great transformation but he looks so generic. The front looks great, with the "chrome" look, but the white plastic is atrocious and quite frankly, a deal breaker.

Polls are useless on a forum where people generally ignore them. You have X amount of people who see it and don't respond because at the end of the day, they're referring to "facts" when it's really just "whoever decided to vote in a poll where whomever has more of the same opinion, "wins."

And then what? I wouldn't ever refer to some internet forum poll as an end all to be all. Saying something along the lines of "Well, people prefer 3P..." or "People prefer Takara..." "...because it said so on an internet forum." Isn't really credible.

The fact is, you'll have people who like one, the other or both. I think the transformation on this is neat, but the overall aesthetic makes it look like a no-buy for me, especially at the price he's commanding.

What really needs to stop is all the assumptions, such as "oh people insult and bad-mouth Takara but then turn around and buy it, every single time." That's... that's not true. There are people who are genuinely happy with whatever offering they get first, or others are merely just content because it's not worth it to get something similar (not in Inferno's case but in general) and shell out another 100 bucks for something that will just stay on a shelf most of the time anyway.

There are a lot of different variables here that can't be calculated with any sort of poll.

Just enjoy your toys, yeah?

 

So I'm seeing a pin hinge joint on those shin pieces. But no reference to them. Anyone know why they are there? I think the shin piece is supposed to be pulled forward.

 

This thing is way too cartoon accurate.

And yet I still bought it.

Though I'm not sure why I still buy MPs as nothing has really blown me away since Hasui left, left alone just straight disappointed.

 

Amazon JP says it cant ship Inferno to my CA address. Bummer.

 

Absolutely agree. I would never say that a poll is the end all be all either...nor would I call it meaningless. It's simply one piece of evidence among others (price cuts, Amazon Japan reviews, length before selling out, etc.) from which we can draw some conclusions. One thing we can absolutely say with certainty because of TFW2005 polls is that there are a lot more than the BS made up number of five people that think Takara is going too far toon....

Sadly, because you're just like me. You've invested too much time and money in an MP collection to just give up on it...so we buy the best available even when it means compromising the things we felt made the line special.

Yeah, unfortunately he was only available for global shipping for a few short weeks in October. If you plan on getting Grapple or Megatron though, I would encourage you to preorder them now. You'll be guaranteed the lowest available price that Amazon will provide (which is likely lower than any other place period), you won't have to pay until it ships, and you can cancel at any time if you choose.

 

At this point , it's not even about the designers anymore . It's what Takara wants . Had Hasui still been here , you'd still see a change in the over all design / aesthetics . This is the new direction , regardless of whose making them.

 

Damn, the past 2 pages have been really painful to read. Can we get back to the discussion on MP33?
For whats it worth, MP33 currently trumps over the current 3rd party offerings.
As much as I like MTs inferno, he looks squat. MMC's version is lanky but does not scream Inferno to me. The mold dont even make a good Grapple but their RoadCrane aka Hauler might just do it.

I wish the senseless bickering can just stop. If one person dont like 3rd parties (and to phase that person's words - turd party), just agree to disagree and move on. Egging and trying to get gratification from those who like 3rd parties is a senseless attempt of establishing self worth. Different ppl will like different things. Just live with it.

 

Upon seeing the video review by the Chosen Prime, I'll stick to my guns.

I think MMC's Backdraft is still the best looking Inferno there is. The proportions just work better for me (I don't really care for the MP's upper body/lower body balance) and the altmode is more how I remember Fire trucks from the 80's. Most importantly of all, I don't want cartoon MP's, I want a Masterpiece to be the best possible figure and the Hasui mix. I miss details on the official MP, details from the orignal toy and the real life truck (mostly on the back of the truck and with that on the feet of the robot), but also details you expect to see on a robot.

So look-wise, Backdraft is for me the best.


But oh boy, transformation and handling seems to be the complete opposite. I've never enjoyed transforming Backdraft, fiddling with it or posing it. But the MP seems like a whole lotta fun. Brilliant transformation and very posable. He must be a joy to pick up, transform and just pose. (Looks like MP Ironhide all over again where I don't like how the figure looks, but it's the MP I pick up most and transform most, simply because he's fun.)


But exchanging Backdraft for the MP would mean having to kitbash the MP: adding details to the legs, adding real truck details (to the feet). I can do that and it's tempting to make a fun MP look the way I want it, but I can't change the upper body/lower body proportions to be more to my liking. But he looks like a lot of fun and in that beat the competion. To bad that I don't like the look of the current MP's.


(I think I'll get the likely KO for kitbashing purposes.)

 

I really like him compared to the other 3Ps after seeing the Chosen Primes video. I'm just wondering what repro labels might be available to spruce him up a little. He's just slightly too boring in the bottom half (for me anyway).

 

I'm a huge supporter of 3rd party. I have at least one figure from 6 different 3P companies, but the TT Inferno is tits. It's perfection. I love it.

 

Interesting. TakaraTomy switched back to a Chinese factory for MP Inferno.

For a while it looked as if they'd fully moved production to Vietnam for brand new molds.